Black Death spread by humans?

[Brian G Turner]

Well, we've seen rats and gerbils alternatively blamed for carrying the fleas that brought the Black Death to Europe - now a study suggests it was fleas and lice living off people that were the cause rather than our furry friends: Black Death 'spread by humans not rats'

 

[SilentRoamer]

Well just to chime in here on a personal note about fleas.

Once we got fleas in our house, this was before we owned any pets. We spoke to the vets about it and the most likely explanation they said was a passing mouse had fleas and that's how they got in.

Anyways it was summer so the weather was nice and warm, I tried everything to get rid of these fleas, I bombed the house, used spray, used powder, hoovered multiple times a day. Still kept getting bloody bitten and kept seeing the little blighters occasionally. It took a number of weeks of constant treatments on the house and the best thing for getting rid of them was plain old salt. In the end I bought a load of cheap table salt and spread it round the whole house, voila! no more fleas. Apparently the salt just dries them out and kills them.

So a year or so after this we decided to get a cat, first time the cat went out (with a flea collar and prevent) she came beck scratching. Anyhow out came the salt and before you know it the house was clear again.

The point of this is that fleas don't need animals in order to live, they're quite happy feasting on humans and (even by modern standards) they can be a nightmare to get rid of. According to the vet a lot of it depends on what type of flea you get, some are happy living on anything with blood and others are more species specific.

I rarely call for the complete eradication of a species but I would happily aqcuiesce for fleas!

 

[Alexa]

I've always suspected human hygiene was a real problem those days.

 

[SilentRoamer]

I've always suspected human hygiene was a real problem those days.

Oi! Cheeky!

I can testify that it really doesn't matter how clean you or your home is, if you get an infestation then budging it is a real pain. It seems a lot easier to control an infestation if you have a walking meal that you can poison.

 

[Alexa]

Oi! Cheeky!

I can testify that it really doesn't matter how clean you or your home is, if you get an infestation then budging it is a real pain. It seems a lot easier to control an infestation if you have a walking meal that you can poison.

My point is that we cannot compare our homes from 21st century with those from 1346 - 1353.

 

[SilentRoamer]

I can totally imagine fleas just living in peoples houses and hopping on and off their walking buffets.

They are absolutely gross I truly despise them.

 

[Parson]

Does it have to be one or the other? Couldn't rats have been the original carrier and then human fleas carried it on?

 

[J Riff]

Ewwwwww, there is nothing worser nor bedbugs. They are evolved to sneak up, aneathetize yer skin, drink only human blood. Truly evil, they make fleas look like pansies. Fleas want animal blood, bedbugs are after US. In ancient times... when they were much much bigger.... well it's too terrible to even contemplate.
Spreading salt along the wainscotting (!) will keep out ants or almost anything, apparently.

 

[Dave]

Well just to chime in here on a personal note about fleas... Once we got fleas in our house, this was before we owned any pets.

When I lived in the downstairs flat in a maisonette, we had fleas in carpet that came from the cats in the upstairs flat. I think they can survive for quite a long time without food and aren't fussy when they are hungry.

The article that I read on that report said they had only looked at the first wave of plague. It seemed like quite a sophisticated piece of statistical historical research using the dates of deaths to map the rate of the spread of the disease, and then determining that the rapid spread could only by fleas from human to human. It would be too slow if by an intermediary like a rat or gerbil, or if airborne. However, they didn't claim that it was solely spread that way; it could well be a combination. They also made no claims about the later waves of plague.

 

[Venusian Broon]

This is, I think related, but probably doesn't need a thread of it's own:

Aztec apocalypse found to be Salmonella outbreak

It shows that even with well-documented disease outbreaks in history there is actually a tremendous amount of debate as to exactly what they were, and even when they find some concrete evidence there is no reason to believe that we have actually found the complete picture.

In the OP research they were, from my brief reading, using current properties of modern bubonic plague to estimate what was happening in the past, which is always a tad dangerous.

BTW I think airborne is the fastest way of spreading plague - and it's person-to-person - i.e. pneumonic plague - coughing and breathing the bacteria from infected lungs. Actually it may have been so fast for medieval society that it actually would have reduced geographical spread if it was prevalent - as it develops very quickly after exposure. So they chose the slower-paced human lice model as it fits better?

 

[BAYLOR]

Does it have to be one or the other? Couldn't rats have been the original carrier and then human fleas carried it on?

The fleas on the Black Rat but those would have spread to humans.

 

[sknox]

There are multiple vectors in modern outbreaks. I've never understood the impulse to identify "the" cause, nor why these articles fail to look at later outbreaks.

 

[Montero]

I visited a village in Derbyshire which had an isolated outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1666 - isolated because they put themselves in quarantine. Its arrival is attributed to fleas in a batch of cloth from London - or of course could have been lice. The village of the damned.

Some years back I saw a documentary on the new theory that in terms of symptoms and the timing of the spread of the disease the Medieval extreme plague period was anthrax not bubonic plague - contemporary chroniclers mentioned it coming with the wind. May have been a figure of speech, maybe not. Anyway, here is a rather good article discussing the pros and cons of what it really was.

Theories of the Black Death - Wikipedia

 

[Dave]

There are multiple vectors in modern outbreaks. I've never understood the impulse to identify "the" cause, nor why these articles fail to look at later outbreaks.

Its arrival [in Eyam] is attributed to fleas in a batch of cloth from London - or of course could have been lice.

In defence of the historical researchers, and from what I read, and as I have already said, they didn't try to establish a single vector, nor did they look at later outbreaks (probably because of the time that would be necessary for the scope of doing that) but it is newspaper reporters who do exactly that, because it is more sensational to have a headline like the name of this thread. The problem with our modern public circulation of science, and history, and whatever else, is that we get it filtered, second hand, through journalists who do not fully understand the material they are writing about, and whose main purpose, in any case, is to only sell "sensational" newspapers, rather than to educate.

I think airborne is the fastest way of spreading plague... So they chose the slower-paced human lice model as it fits better?

Yes, that was completely my mistake. I meant to say that. The "human lice model" best fitted because it was intermediate between the faster airborne and slower intermediary carrier.

 

[Montero]

@Dave
Absolutely on many journalists on science - many journalists or newspaper editors on most things. (I was part of a local campaign some years back and the local press wanted banners, scowls, shaken fists - literally - photographer called out to us all to shake our fists - when we were politely behaved and boring, they didn't put us in the paper.)

 

[BAYLOR]

There are multiple vectors in modern outbreaks. I've never understood the impulse to identify "the" cause, nor why these articles fail to look at later outbreaks.

About half of Europe perished.

 

[sknox]

About half of Europe perished.

True, but it was still only the one outbreak. The next outbreak was, to me, more interesting because it disproportionately affected young people; so much so it was sometimes called the Children's Plague. These and other variations make the plague more than just a single thing.

Anyway, as a historian, I'm less interested in the biology than I am in the effects. Live people are generally more interesting than dead ones.